


All That I Ever Was

by Iben



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crimes & Criminals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 19:38:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3949165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John never stops to think about the consequences, of anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the trailer for the film Legend, and I just thought, what if there were two of them? That's where the idea for this story started anyway.

I ran through the streets. They were wet from rain and the yellow streetlights were reflected in the puddles. A car came around the corner and the doors on both sides opened. I tried to dodge the guys that got out, ran to the side, forced myself to go faster even though my lungs burned, but the guy closest to me grabbed me and I lost my balance. The scuffle was short, he clocked me and then the other guy was on me as well. 

My arms were forced up onto my back, and for a short moment I thought the guys were cops, but then they yanked me up from the ground and forced me into the trunk of the car. I was out of breath, my heart pounding. I usually didn't have a problem with confined spaces, but this was most definitely a problem. Panic pumped through my veins.

I was brought back to the warehouse, where they already had Trent and David, tied up and with bloody noses. The merchandise that we had gone after was sitting right there, in boxes stacked along the walls, taunting us. This was Trent's fault, for not doing proper research beforehand. He'd gotten us caught, not by the cops but by the owners of the warehouse, which, it seemed, was actually far worse. I glanced at Trent, but at the moment I was too scared to be as angry with him as I should have been.

They roughed us up, they were big guys with heavy fists, and I couldn't do anything but hope that each blow would be the last. I was bleeding from my eyebrow, but I could still see with both eyes, and my heart skipped a beat beneath my bruised ribs when I caught sight of a familiar figure in the doorway. 

For a short second I thought it was all going to be all right, but then I realized it wasn't him. It was his brother, Dorrance. They were close to identical, but not quite. 

Had Trent known that the warehouse belonged to them? If so, I was going to kill him. Unless they killed us first, in which case I was going to kill him again, anyway. 

I kept my gaze on Dorrance. He had a cigarette in one hand, the other was empty, but I could see a gun there underneath his jacket. His gaze glanced over us. Did he recognize me? We had never been formally introduced. I wanted there to be something there in his eyes, but I couldn't tell. 

I was expecting a speech, something along the lines of 'You dare to steal from us?' or 'Do you know who I am?', but we didn't get one. I wondered if I should speak up, but what the hell was I supposed to say? 'I'm fucking your brother, I think he'd be upset if you killed me'?

I had seen Dorrance before, everyone had, but only from a distance. He didn't have the scars on his face that Bane had, and seeing him this close provided me with an idea of what Bane would have looked like without them. 

“All right,” Dorrance said. “Those two.” He pointed with his cigarette at Trent and David, and one of the henchmen raised his gun and put a bullet through one and then the other. I scrunched my eyes shut for a second, I couldn't help myself. My insides went ice-cold and burning hot at the same time. 

“I'll take him.” I heard Dorrance say the words, but I couldn't interpret his tone of voice. My mind was filled with some kind of white noise. He could have meant he was going to kill me himself, or that he did, in fact, know who I was and had other plans for me. But I wasn't going to leave it up to chance. Not now, when I knew for a fact that even a failed attempt at robbing them meant death.

“I know Bane,” I blurted out.

I felt out of breath, a sharp, white anxiety coursing through me. Dorrance walked up to me and my breath got stuck in my throat when he stepped behind me. He was going to shoot me in the back of my head. When I was dead I wouldn't be able to tell Bane anyway. But then I felt the rope that held my hands together being cut off. 

“Let's go,” he said. 

The night air felt fresh when I stepped out from the warehouse, even though we were down by the docks and it probably smelled like shit. I took deep breaths of it, as if I had never filled my lungs like that before in my life.

“Get in,” Dorrance said. 

There was a black car parked right outside and I got in on the passenger side. Dorrance got in behind the wheel. The streets were mostly deserted at this hour. It felt strange sitting there, in the silence, with him. 

“We didn't know it was your place,” I said. 

I thought about Trent and David, and felt sick. 

“Pretty stupid mistake,” Dorrance said. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

I swallowed, but the lump in my throat wouldn't go away. I'd been so fucking lucky. If he hadn't been there I would have been dead. He had recognized me. 

I glanced at him. It was eerie how much he looked like Bane, and yet he was a complete stranger. I didn't say anything else. I looked out through the window. I realized he was taking me to Bane's place, I knew these streets. 

Most of the windows in the apartment complex where Bane lived were dark when the car came to a stop by the sidewalk. The neon sign above the convenience store across the street was lit, but the security blinds were down. 

I thought maybe I should say something, but I didn't know what. I didn't want to say sorry, not when he'd had Trent and David shot right in front of me. I didn't want to thank him for saving my life either, it seemed too melodramatic and cringing. So I didn't say anything and he sped off the moment I was out of the car. 

Walking up the stairs felt almost like a weird sort of walk of shame. I didn't have a key, because Bane was all kinds of paranoid, so I rang the doorbell. As I waited I felt the pain, from the beating I had taken, the adrenaline wearing off. 

Bane opened the door stark naked, but he'd already seen through the peephole in the door that it was me. There was only one light on, in the kitchen, but it was apparently enough to tell how I looked.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he said. 

I felt then how tired I was. Worn out. I just wanted to cuddle up next to him and sleep for a week.

“I need to clean up,” I said and headed to the bathroom. It seemed unnaturally bright when I flipped the light-switch, hurting my eyes. I grimaced as I peeled off my bloodied clothes and dropped them onto the floor. I stepped into the shower and washed off the blood and the sweat, but I felt filthy anyway, the two shots ringing in my head. 

I looked in the mirror after I had dried myself off. I had some bruises, the split eyebrow. I looked like shit, but I didn't have a gaping hole in my head. 

Bane was sitting on the edge of the bed when I got into the bedroom. He was a muscular guy, he had tattoos and hair on his chest and the whole nine yards, but without clothes he seemed almost as vulnerable as anyone else. His dick was soft against his thigh, his hair was a mess and stood up at the back of his head, and he was unshaven. I kind of loved that look on him.

I had to tell him what had happened. I'd rather tell him myself, than have him hear about it from his brother later. He looked up at me.

“I wanna lie down,” I said, making a gesture for him to move so I could get into bed. He obliged, and got into bed next to me. 

“So?” he said.

“I was doing a job, with... some friends,” I said. “We were going to steal some stuff, and it went wrong. Turned out it was one of your places.”

“You tried to rob me?” 

“I didn't know, all right?” 

He didn't look pissed off, but he was difficult to read sometimes. 

“Anyway, the whole thing went south,” I said. “The guys I was with hadn't done their research, there were guards, and we were caught. Your brother was there.”

“Dorrance did this?” Bane gazed at my darkening bruises.

“No, your guys did. But he showed up, and he recognized me, took me here.” Instead of shooting me. 

Bane didn't say anything. 

“What would you have done if he had beaten me up?” I said.

“Nothing. You tried to rob us, what did you expect?” Bane rolled over onto his back. 

“I didn't know it was your place!” 

“All the same, you work with cretins, that's what happens.”

“They weren't cretins!” I said. I didn't even use words like 'cretins'. But part of me knew that's what Trent and David had been. “Thank you so much for your fucking sympathy.”

I turned my back to him. 

“You expect sympathy?” Bane said after a little while, as if he had been turning it over in his head. 

“Not for the robbery attempt, that was a mistake, and I'm sorry, okay? But for being beaten up, yeah, some sympathy would have been nice.”

“All right. Come here, then.”

I wanted to stay pissed off at him. It was easier to focus on that than thinking about what had happened. But I turned around, scooted closer. 

“Careful, my ribs are pretty sore,” I said. 

Bane nodded a little. I slid my arm around him, his skin was warm, and he held me. He kissed me and I kissed him back. He smelled nice, familiar and exciting at the same time. 

“Don't rob me again,” he said.

“I wasn't trying to rob you. I didn't know. Can you drop it?”

“I don't enjoy getting robbed.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake!”

**

Word about the attempted robbery trickled out, as things like that always did. Trent and David were missing, no one knew what had happened to them, but at the same time everyone knew. I wasn't sure if people knew anything about my involvement, but of course there were those who knew. The guys who had been there that night.

By chance I ran into Dorrance again just little over a week later. I walked into a bar, where my friend Selina worked, and there he was, sitting by one of the tables. He didn't pay me any attention. I couldn't tell if he liked me or disliked me. I didn't know what his thoughts were on Bane's sexual orientation in general. I didn't know him. 

I walked up to the bar. Selina was behind it. 

“Hi handsome,” she said when she saw me. “You're early, you want a beer or something?”

“Sure.”

I sat down by the counter. I felt conscious of Dorrance's presence behind me. He didn't have to kill Trent and David. I had thought about it a lot over the last week. We didn't even make it away with anything. The whole thing was a flop, a sloppy job. They would never had tried to steal from him and Bane again. Most people knew better. 

Just like I knew better than to try to avenge them. Apart from the fact that Dorrance was completely out of my reach, killing my boyfriend's twin brother would make things awkward to say the least. I wasn't very close with either Trent nor David, wouldn't have called them friends, but to see them executed in front of me... 

Selina gave me a beer. 

“My shift's over soon,” she said and I nodded. 

There was a guy sitting a couple of chairs away from me. I had seen the back of his head when I came in. Now he turned his head slightly in my direction and I saw, even from the corner of my eye, that he was one who had jumped out of the car and grabbed me. 

“Spreading your legs for the big man clearly has its benefits,” he said. 

I turned in my seat.

He had said it quietly, but I knew Dorrance had heard him over at his table. I met Dorrance's gaze, by accident, for a second, but he hadn't reacted. It was a slur directed at me, not Bane. 

“What did you say?” I said to the man at the bar. 

“You heard me.”

There were a number of things I could have chosen to say. I could have said that I didn't 'spread my legs', it was the other way around, except talking about what Bane and I did in the bedroom was not something I wanted to do. Bane sure as hell wouldn't appreciate it either, he guarded his personal life. 

I could have told the guy to shut his fucking mouth, or shouted insults at him, or calmly explained to him that an attempted robbery didn't actually warrant getting a bullet in the head, no matter who you made sweet love to at night. But sometimes action really did speak much louder than words.

I got up from my seat and walked right up into his space. 

“You've got some kind of problem with me?” I said. “Hm? Or with Bane, perhaps?”

Yeah, I went there. I always kind of despised myself afterward, but seeing people turn pale when I mentioned his name was always satisfying and too tempting to resist. 

“Not in the bar, please, guys, take it outside,” Selina said. 

“Out with it!” I said and shoved him.

“Keep your fucking hands off me!”

Dorrance got up from his seat. 

“We've got somewhere to be,” he said. He nodded towards the door and the guy gave me one last look of contempt and then he left. 

Dorrance walked up to the bar and put a couple of bills on the counter. 

“You're a real hothead, you know that?” he said to me. 

“You might want to keep your dogs in check,” I replied.

He smiled a little at that. He looked over at Selina, who was standing a little further away.

“You all right, honey?” he said. 

She nodded.

“Okay. See you guys around.” And with that he headed out the door. 

Selina and I left soon after, when her shift had ended. We were going to the movies, and the theater was within walking distance so we set off along the sidewalk.

“Does he come to the bar a lot?” I asked her. I hadn't seen him there before, and since it was Selina's place of work I was there fairly regularly. 

“Now and then,” she replied. 

She glanced at me and smiled. I looked at her for a couple of seconds.

“No fucking way,” I said. “You've slept with him?”

“Come on, you've seen him, he's gorgeous! And even if he didn't have his looks, he's a charmer, he could talk his way into any girl's pants. Besides, who are you to judge me, you're sleeping with the weird one.”

“Bane isn't weird.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Maybe he was a little weird. 

“It was just a one-time thing, a while back,” Selina said, “but it was good. He's got a great body.”

I had a pretty good idea of what Dorrance's body might look like. He and Bane were identical twins, after all. 

“Does he have tattoos?” I asked.

“No. Not that I saw anyway. Bane does, right? I've seen his arms.”

I nodded. Bane had a lot of tattoos. Some of them were ugly, a couple of prison tattoos, but most of them were cool. 

“Is he a good kisser? 'Cause Dorrance is a great kisser.”

“Yeah. But let's stop this conversation right here, because it's fucking weird.”

Selina laughed. I had known her since we were kids. I supposed she was my best friend. She hadn't always been, but she had come to be. 

We saw a movie, it was pretty good, and when we got back out again it had started raining. 

“What do you feel like doing now?” Selina asked as we stood just outside the doors where there was an overhanging roof providing shelter from the rain. “Are you heading home?”

“I don't know.”

“You wanna go out?” 

“Where?”

“I don't know. A club?”

“Nah, not really.” I wasn't the vainest man on the planet, but I honestly didn't feel like going clubbing with bruises still all over my face. I looked at Selina. “We could go to my place, order some food, watch another movie?”

“Okay.”

There was a problem with that plan, though. When we got to my place there was a padlock on my door and a note saying I hadn't paid the rent so I could kiss my apartment bye-bye.

“Fuck!” I kicked the door. I went downstairs and knocked on the landlord's door. No answer. I could hear the television in there. I pounded on the door. Selina had followed me downstairs and she rolled her eyes. 

“You've got a bolt cutter?” I asked.

“Yeah, let me just check here in my purse, I might have one, along with my phone and my lipstick and my hairbrush.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “Fuck.”

It was still pouring outside. I called Bane to check if he was home, his place was closer than Selina's. When we showed up there a little later, completely drenched, he gave Selina a suspicious glance and looked like he didn't want to let her into the apartment. 

“This is my friend Selina. You've met,” I said. 

“Hi,” Selina said. 

Bane nodded a little. I took a couple of towels from the closet in the hallway and handed one to Selina. I told Bane about being locked out of my own apartment while I dried my hair and face and then I changed into a dry t-shirt. I had some clothes here, left behind both on purpose and by accident. 

“Is it all right if we hang out here a bit, watch a movie maybe?” I asked Bane. 

He didn't look as if he thought that was all right. 

“May I use the bathroom?” Selina asked.

“Yeah, it's through there,” I said and indicated the door. When she'd gone in there I walked up to Bane. 

“You bring people here?” he said.

“Not 'people',” I replied, “Selina, whom I've known since I was a kid.”

I looked at him and he looked back at me. 

“You have nothing to be jealous about,” I said and smiled.

“I'm not.”

“Then what's the problem? I was locked out, we just wanna watch a movie, then she'll go home.”

I took his hand. 

“Fine. But this isn't a hostel, you know.”

“A hostel? What are you talking about? Don't you ever have guests?”

“Usually not.”

We watched a movie, all three of us, and then I followed Selina to the door as she was leaving.

“I'll walk you home,” I said.

“I'll manage.” 

Selina could take care of herself, but still. Bane came out from the living room.

“I've called a cab for you,” he said and held out a couple of bills to her. 

“Um, thanks,” she said after a seconds hesitation and smiled a little tentatively as she took them. 

I looked at Bane. 

“It's late,” he said. 

“Yeah.” I turned to Selina again. “Talk to you soon?”

She nodded. “Bye. Thanks.” She raised the hand holding the cab money.

**

The next morning, in the vague morning light, Bane and I kissed and rubbed against each other, jerked each other off, until we had made a mess of the sheets. Then we got up and Bane made coffee while I took a shower. 

I was sitting by the table when he walked back into the kitchen, showered and dressed, and put a bundle of bills next to my breakfast. 

“What...” I began.

“For your rent,” he said. 

I stared at the money for a moment, then at him. 

“I'm not some fucking prostitute,” I said.

“No, if you were I wouldn't pay your rent for you.”

“You're a fucking asshole!” I got up. 

“Just take the money, and take care of your business.”

“You just want to make sure I don't bring a friend over here again.”

“This is my apartment.”

I met his gaze.

“You could hire me for a job instead,” I said. 

“I don't want to hire you.”

I snatched the money from the table.

“People are already laughing at me behind my back anyway,” I said. “You may as well keep me as some sort of fucking concubine.” 

Bane frowned.

“What do you mean?” he said. 

“It was one of your guys, actually. He made a comment.”

“About?” 

“About what I supposedly do for you. It's easy when you're a big fucking gangster, no one dares to make any comments about you.”

“I've gotten my share of comments. You should have just knocked his teeth out.”

Bane came closer and put his arms around me. I smiled, despite myself. 

“Yeah, it's not that easy when he works for your brother,” I said. “I don't think your brother likes me.”

“It doesn't matter if he likes you,” Bane said, leaning in and nuzzling my neck. “I like you.”

I turned my face towards his neck, breathing in the scent of him. I was in love with him and it was actually kind of stupid, because he really wasn't all that charming. He was handsome, though. Or he would have been, just like Dorrance was, if it hadn't been for those scars. The largest one bisected his mouth, twisting what would otherwise have been lovely lips, and went all the way up to his cheekbone. His nose had been broken too, there was a small bump on the bridge of it.

There were stories about what he and Dorrance had done to the people who did that to him. I hadn't heard them from him, though, so I didn't know what was true and what wasn't.

He was handsome anyway. At least I thought so. 

I went to my apartment complex, with a bolt cutter I had borrowed from Bane just in case, but this time I got the landlord to open his door, so that I could shove the bundle of bills in his hands. He made a face like the money disgusted him. 

He removed the padlock from my door. 

“It's a good thing you didn't use that thing,” he said with a look at the bolt cutter. “That would have been destruction of property.”

I turned my head and looked at him. “Is that so?” I said. He didn't say anything more.

Bane came by that same evening, without calling first, which was his usual style. 

“I don't really have anything,” I said. “Some soda, maybe.”

“I just wanted to see that you got in.” He looked around my living room, as if he hadn't seen it before. He had. He'd been here on several occasions. 

“I can't stay,” he said.

“You want your bolt cutter back?”

“All right.” He picked it up from where it was sitting on my table, then he walked up to me. “Have a good one.” He kissed me and then he left.


	2. Chapter 2

I went to visit Uncle Jim one Saturday afternoon. Here's the thing about my uncle Jim – he used to be a cop, a detective actually. He wasn't one anymore, though. He had made himself inconvenient to his superiors and now he worked security at a mall. It was a shame, I honestly thought so, because he had been a good cop, in more than one sense of the word. The one good thing about it all was that he didn't have to go after me. 

Jim made a pot of coffee and we went to sit in the living room. The fabric on the sofa was worn thin and the leather armchair Jim usually sat in was dry and cracked. The TV was on, showing some football game. We talked about this and that, then Jim cleared his throat.

“I've heard that you've started to hang around the twins,” he said. 

That's how Bane and Dorrance often were referred to, the twins, as if it was an epithet with a capital letter, or the name of a folk singer duo. 

“That's not a very good idea,” Jim said, his blue gaze fixed on me. “They're dangerous people.”

I wasn't surprised he'd heard about it. People talked and Jim was the kind of guy who had his ear to the ground. The surprising part was that it took him this long.

I couldn't tell him I was dating one of them. I didn't want to tell him. He knew I was gay, but I didn't know if he had heard that particular rumor about Bane, so I couldn't say if he'd made that connection. Perhaps it wasn't the first conclusion he'd jump to, anyway. He knew I made my living in a mostly illegal way. Nothing I had done had ever come near the scale of business where Bane and Dorrance operated, but chances were, if you were a criminal in this town, you either worked for them, or wanted to work for them. I wanted to work for them too.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. 

“Doesn't matter. I'm serious, you don't want to get mixed up with them.”

“I'm not.” I said that because he worried enough about me as it was. And it was true, wasn't it? So far Bane had showed absolutely zero interest in letting me do any jobs for him. 

“They should be in prison, both of them, for the things they've done. And they would have been, if there had been any justice system worth the name.” 

I went to refill our cups. 

“Speaking of prison,” Jim said when I got back from the kitchen. “Have you been to visit Bruce?”

I looked at him for a moment. He knew I hadn't, why even bring it up?

Here's the thing about me – I, too, had a brother. Bruce was older than me. I was a child when our parents died, and he took care of me, until he got himself landed in prison. But that wasn't why I was angry with him. Sure, I felt abandoned at the time, and all that, but shit like that happened. No, my problem with Bruce was about something else. It was still connected to that one event, though. 

When he got arrested he put me up for adoption. He was my legal guardian, so he had the power to do so. That was such a fucking betrayal, no matter what he said about me having a chance at a better life. I stopped talking to him. And I was never adopted. I ended up in the foster care system, where no family wanted to keep me, then at a boy's home and then at uncle Jim's. Jim had a lot of problems of his own at the time of Bruce's arrest, drinking and divorce, but he cleaned up his act and I stayed with him until I got a place of my own. 

“He really misses you,” Jim said. 

“Like hell he does.”

The talk about staying away from the twins, and then Bruce, it made my skin crawl and the afternoon was folding into evening anyway. I left soon after that. I went clubbing with Selina and a couple of other friends that night. Then I took a cab to Bane's place. 

“If your brother had put you up for adoption,” I said when we had gone to bed and I was staring up at the ceiling. “What would you do then?”

“We're the same age,” Bane replied. 

“But if you weren't.”

“He would never do that. That's what your brother did?”

I had never talked about Bruce with him, so I wasn't even aware that he knew I had a brother. Of course, considering where Bruce was, maybe it wasn't so strange that he did. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

“I could have him taken care of, if you want.”

I turned my head and looked at him. He was lying on his stomach, his arm around the pillow. 

“That better be a joke,” I said. 

He smiled. 

“God, you're sick,” I said and turned towards him. I put my hand on his shoulder, it was muscular, the skin smooth and warm and the black ink beneath it indiscernible to my fingers. I slid my palm across his back, taking pleasure in the fact that I could touch him freely like that. 

I love you. I wanted to say it. But I wasn't sure he would say it back, so I didn't. 

**

Struggling to find rent money seemed to be the new theme of my life. The money Bane had given me had covered what I owed, but there was always the next one. I knew I had probably overreacted when he paid the ones that were overdue – he didn't have to, he was being kind. I could have asked him to help me pay for another one, but I didn't want to do that. We hadn't really dated all that long. I wasn't seeing anyone else and I didn't think he was, but I didn't know that for sure. It wasn't as if we were this old couple. 

I did a small job with a couple of guys I knew who were sort of morons. I drove the car. Then I knocked over a liquor store, by myself. I was really tired of working with morons and I was tired of only doing small time jobs. But I needed the money, so I did it anyway, and it was still better than dealing at nightclubs. 

I liked my apartment. Really liked it. It wasn't much, perhaps, to anyone else, but to me it was. If only I could get in on a job that payed well, like, really well. Then rent problems wouldn't be an issue anymore. Life could be different. It could be fast cars and people treating you with respect.

“I'm being evicted at the end of this month too,” Selina said. 

We were sitting in a coffee shop that was two blocks away from the bar where she worked. It was a dump, but we always went there anyway. The coffee was okay. 

“Why?” I asked.

“I'm late paying the rent.”

“But you've got a steady job.”

“Yeah, but first of all, my place is horribly overpriced...”

I laughed. “So you're withholding the rent money because they don't deserved it?”

Selina rolled her eyes at me. “No, but I should. No, it's just... I've had other expenses. And no sugar daddy to pick up the slack.”

I made a face. “I really, really hate that term, and it is not applicable either.”

“Applicable?” She smiled. “All right. How about this then, what if I moved in with you? We could split the rent and other things as well. You know, shop for food together and be smart about our purchases.”

It was actually not a bad idea. We had been friends long enough and were close enough that it could work. 

“Yeah, but I've only got one bedroom.”

“I could take the couch. I really don't mind, if you don't?”

We didn't waste any time. I borrowed a car from a friend and then I helped Selina pack up her things. While I carried the last box out to the car she went and told her landlord to kiss her ass goodbye. When we got back to my, now our, place, I made pasta and a tomato sauce while Selina unpacked. We opened a bottle of wine to celebrate our new living arrangement. 

Sometimes life was a thing of contrasts. One evening I had homemade dinner and cheap wine in regular glasses, shared in front of an episode of an old western series. The next I was at a fancy restaurant with crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. 

We were four guys around the table; me and Bane, and two other guys I barely knew. One of them, Barsad, I had met a couple of times before and the other guy, Adam, I had only seen once when Bane and I were out and he stopped the car to talk to him through the rolled down window. 

I sipped my wine. I was not an expert in any way, but this was a completely different thing from what Selina and I had drunk yesterday. The other three guys talked, about people, about business. I didn't have very much to contribute to the conversation, but I liked watching Bane like this, observe him. I got a glimpse of his world and I listened. 

I wasn't sitting next to him, both Barsad and Adam were between us, and he didn't pay me that much attention. I wished that hadn't bothered me, but it did. He was like that when he was busy thinking about other things, and he wasn't affectionate in public. But he had invited me, didn't mind me sitting here and hearing the things they talked about. That was a sign of trust, of confidence. 

But the evening was only partly about business. After dinner we continued to a club. Not the kind I usually frequented on my nights out, but a regular one. It was a good feeling, walking right past the line that snaked along the sidewalk outside, and have the bouncer just open the door for us. 

I had no idea why Bane went to a place like this, because he didn't seem to enjoy it very much. I did. I had drinks, they were put on the twins' tab which I suspected they never had to pay, talked to people and danced. I saw Dorrance, talking and smiling, and a girl behaving like she was a planet and he was the sun. Bane wasn't like that at all. He disappeared for a while, to talk to someone probably, and when he came back I walked up to him.

“Having fun?” he asked. 

“Yeah.”

“I'm leaving.”

“Okay. I think I'll stay a little while, if that's okay with you. I'll come over to your place later?”

He nodded and then he left. 

It was well into the small hours of the morning before I got into a cab. Bane let me into the apartment. He hadn't gone to bed yet either, though. There were papers strewn over the coffee table and the parts of at least two guns. The TV was on with the sound turned off. He went to sit down on the couch again. He was wearing sweatpants and a wife beater that showed off his muscular arms. Bare feet. 

I went to sit down next to him. He picked up an already lit cigarette from the ashtray that was on the table, next to whatever those papers were. 

“Are you coming to bed soon?” I asked, putting my arms around him, leaning in and kissing him right where his neck met his shoulder. 

“Yeah, soon.” 

“I wanna do things with you.”

“You haven't gotten your fill already?”

That threw me. I straightened a bit. 

“What...” I began. “You think I've been with someone else? Before coming here?”

He turned his head and looked at me. “You haven't?”

“No!”

I met his gaze but then he turned back towards the table. The room fell silent. I wished I hadn't had so much to drink, I had difficulties thinking straight. 

“Are you seeing someone else?” I eventually asked. “Or fool around?”

“No.”

“But you think I do. Why?”

“You're young and handsome, and you like to have fun.”

“You're not that many years older than I am.”

“People aren't exactly lining up.”

He made a gesture towards his face. He was frowning when he looked at me. The moment seemed to stand out, unnaturally clear against the moments that had come before it and whatever moments might come later. 

“I haven't been sleeping with anyone else,” I said. “And I wouldn't.”

“It doesn't matter.” He started putting the papers in different piles.

“You don't think it matters if I sleep with someone else?” I couldn't believe he'd say that. 

“No.”

I looked at him. He had a five o'clock shadow, but his beard wouldn't grow where the skin had been cut. 

“It matters to me,“ I said. “And it matters to me if you do.”

I kept looking at him. I wanted it to matter to him. 

“Okay,” he said, turning his head and meeting my gaze again. 

“Okay what?”

“I won't.”

Hearing him say it made me feel strangely elated, almost giddy. 

“Glad we got that cleared up,” I said. He nodded a little and turned back to his work. I looked at his bare feet. He was my big, badass, gangster boyfriend. 

**

“Cops!”

Supposedly we were all genetically programmed to be scared of sharks. It was in our DNA to react, to take action, to run or fight, when coming face to face with large predators with sharp teeth. I had never seen a shark or a lion or anything like that except on TV, so I hadn't ever had to put that theory to test. Growing up in my neighborhood, though, you were likely to have that same predisposition when it came to coming face to face with the police. 

Everyone in the room got up, some reached for a weapon. I had a gun in the waistband of my pants at the small of my back, but what good would that do? Did anyone expect to actually come out on top in a shootout with the police?

I did however not want to get caught in this apartment. What was on the table in front of me was bad enough, and who knew what else was hidden away in the messy, smelly rooms? You never knew, they could claim it was all mine, and I'd be going down hard. 

I had been here before, so that was a good thing. I made for the fire escape before anyone else did. I got down to the street level, and I had thrown the small plastic bags I had in my pocket away. That stung. I'd gotten a pretty good price and I would have made a profit selling that for the price people were willing to pay in nightclubs when they already had a buzz going from drinks and whatnot. But I was glad I did it, because when I exited the alleyway and turned the corner I ran straight into a cop car.

I literally ran straight into it. They weren't going very fast, thankfully, but there went my plan to slow down and act as if I was just leisurely strolling through the neighborhood. They searched me and found the piece I was carrying. Fuck. 

The police station smelled of cops and drunks. I had been there before. Nothing major, just kid stuff. This was the precinct Uncle Jim used to work in. I recognized some of the older cops and they recognized me, but didn't pay me much attention.

I watched a younger detective, probably not that much older than me, strut around the office in his cheap suit, while I waited handcuffed to a desk. Some of the older cops I could respect, they were doing their jobs, they knew what was what and how things worked. But self-important jackasses like this made me want to give them a good punch in the face. 

They didn't want to believe me when I said I had been on my way home and was just taking a shortcut through the alley. They seemed determined that I had been at the dealer's apartment, although I had nothing on me that proved such a thing. 

I could use my phone call to call Jim. I'd probably add to his worry about me and I'd embarrass him further in front of his former colleagues. Not to mention that I didn't know how much sway he still held here. A lot of the guys still respected him, I had gathered that much, but I wasn't sure how much I was willing to bet on that. Or I could call Bane. He'd managed to stay out of jail a long time, they couldn't get anything to stick on him. He had resources, he was connected. The downside was I would look like a complete idiot in front of the guy I was in love with. And to tell the truth, I wasn't entirely sure how he'd react either. 

I called Bane. He'd told me he wouldn't sleep with other guys because of me. I hoped that meant he'd also come get me out of jail. Or he might say I only had myself to blame.

“What phone are you calling from?” was the first thing he said.

“The police station,” I replied. 

I didn't have to say much else. He told me to sit tight, not say anything, someone would come for me. He didn't have to tell me not to say anything, I wasn't born yesterday. Give them a finger and they took an arm, and all that. 

The someone who came for me was a lawyer. I knew her name and recognized her from pictures in newspapers. Talia al-Ghul. I had however never met her before. 

The atmosphere in the entire station changed when she stepped through the door, as if the air was suddenly filled with static electricity. Someone like that had never come for me before. In an instant I looked like I was well-connected in front of the entire precinct, like some kind of big-shot.

I was out of there in no time. I followed Miss al-Ghul out to the parking lot. 

“They have no proof you weren't just walking home, like you said,” she said to me. “And the gun possession, we can make that go away too.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Don't thank me. I only do my job.”

She had a hint of an accent, barely discernible, but it was there. When she started walking I took a step to follow, but she stopped and turned to me again.

“I don't, however, run a taxi service. I'm sure you can find your way home on your own.” She smiled, and her smile was neither warm nor cold, it just was. 

I smiled back automatically. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks again though, for doing your job.”

Just like Miss al-Ghul, Bane didn't seem to be worried about my gun possession charges. I supposed that was small-potato stuff to him. 

“What were you doing there?” he asked me. We were at my place, in my bedroom since Selina was sleeping on the couch. I had moved the TV in here, and I seriously considered putting it on a table that had wheels so that we could just wheel it back and forth between the two rooms.

“What do you think?” I asked. I was lying on my back on the bed. Bane was sitting up, leaning forward slightly as if he found the program on the TV endlessly fascinating, but I wasn't sure he was even really watching it.

“You're dealing their products?” he said.

“A man's gotta make a living.”

Truth was I didn't like dealing. I did it because I was pretty good at it. I felt at home at the night clubs, I fit in, I could make business there. But it didn't interest me. 

I looked at Bane's back. He and Dorrance had robbed banks. They hadn't gotten caught, but everyone knew it. Then they expanded their business, but you needed that initial capital to build something, and the balls to go get it. 

I poked him with my foot until he turned around.

“Are you watching that?” I asked. 

“Not really.”

Bane was sexy like you wouldn't believe. He had an amazing body and I loved the way his eyes went dark when he was turned on. His hands and mouth and tongue on my body felt amazing. We kissed and touched and then we fucked. He was on his back and I closed my eyes for a moment when I pushed inside him, it felt so good, but then I looked at him. I loved how his mouth was half open and how he frowned, ever so slightly. I loved how he moaned under his breath, barely more than a whisper. 

He stroked himself a few times before he came. I came soon after. I collapsed on the bed next to him. He wanted a cigarette. I let him smoke in here only after sex. He turned his head and looked at me. We were lying with our faces close to each other. The way he looked at me, his eyes all soft, it made me melt inside. I kissed him. He tasted of cigarette smoke now. 

He had left when I woke up the next morning. I had a vague memory, almost dreamlike, of him kissing me on my forehead and saying something, possibly 'See you later'. That could have been just minutes ago, or several hours. 

I got up and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. Selina was in the kitchen. Well, I called it the kitchen, it was partitioned off from the living room only by a see-through bookshelf that stretched halfway across the floor, somewhat creating the illusion of it being two different rooms. 

She threw a used coffee filter in the trash and made wide eyes at me.

“He came out here completely naked,” she said. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, he just walked over to the bathroom, not bothered in the slightest. And then, when he came out of there again, he said 'Good morning'.” She started laughing. 

I smiled and sat down by the kitchen table. 

“I offered him some coffee, later when he was dressed, but he didn't want any.” She sat down on one of the empty chairs.

“You could offer me some coffee.”

“You can make your own coffee.” She took a banana from the bowl that sat in the middle of the table and started peeling it. “Listen, should we have a rule about naked guys in the apartment?” 

“Um... No?”

“See, that's just because you're a guy.”

I got up to make my own coffee and to see what I could find in the fridge. 

I went to the boxing gym later that day. That was actually where I met Bane; he owned it. I knew he did when I started to work out there. I didn't know he came there himself, though, and I didn't know he was gay. 

It took me a little while to figure that out. The first few times I saw him I didn't talk to him. I just ogled, the same way you did when you saw celebrities, your brain unable to process that this larger than life person was actually in the room with you. And he didn't talk to me, he talked to the coach, to guys he knew. 

It was I who, eventually, went up to him, in the parking lot outside where he was standing by his car, smoking, and started talking to him. He had kind of laid the foundation for that move, though, because I had noticed him looking at me. Even though I had been completely oblivious to his orientation, he seemed to have gotten a read on mine pretty quickly. And yeah, I was flattered that he was interested. 

The gym smelled of sweaty boxing gloves and men, and it wasn't the nice kind of smell of men. Not like when you pressed your face to the skin of someone you found attractive. There was a very distinct difference between the two. 

It wasn't a high-end kind of place. I didn't know exactly when Bane had bought it, but this was where he came and worked out before he made his way to the top of Gotham's criminal world. He wanted to be a boxer when he was a kid. I knew because he had told me. 

I said hi to the coach and then I got on with my session. I kept a mental list of my training sessions, so I knew what to work on, cardio or weights or whatever. I had two reasons for working out; one, I wanted to be able to punch a guy out before he punched me out, or outrun him, and two, I wanted to look good. Vanity was underrated as a motivating factor, until you started to think about it. How much money wasn't made because of people's vanity? All those businesses catering to people's desire to look good turned over billions. Made you wish you had discovered Botox, didn't it?

When I came outside I checked my phone. I had two text messages. One from Selina, telling me we were out of milk. That felt weirdly domestic, but actually kind of nice. I hadn't thought of myself as lonely, living on my own, but sharing a home with my best friend was surprisingly great. The other was from Jim. 'Can you come by tonight? We need to talk.'


	3. Chapter 3

I could have blown Jim off. I had a feeling I knew what he wanted to talk about, and I wasn't interested. But he was, as far as I was concerned, the only living family I had, and he had been there for me.

I took the bus. In the seat in front of me was a little old lady who kept talking under her breath to herself. When I got there I knocked on the door, the doorbell hadn't worked for a while.

“Hi,” Jim said when he opened and let me inside.

“Hi.”

“I've made dinner, you want some?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

He kept a pretty neat place, since he stopped drinking. When I lived here he taught me how to properly clean a kitchen and a bathroom, something he'd probably had to learn himself when his wife left him.

We ate by the kitchen table, talking about sports (he was a keen follower of both football and basketball, but he knew a little bit about boxing, which I liked better, too), and about the new bus lines and things. Then we brought our coffee mugs into the living room.

“I guess you have an idea about why I wanted to see you,” he said.

I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. He took out a thick, brown paper folder from beside the couch.

“I know you were apprehended, and I know the charges. And I know who came to pick you up, and took on your case, as it were.” His face was serious, his eyes almost sad.

“What of it?” I said.

“Jesus, didn't you hear what I said to you? I told you not to get mixed up with these people!”

“I'm not!”

“Talia al-Ghul is the twins' legal representative, and everyone knows it. Are you telling me that she'd be willing to take on your case simply out of the goodness of her heart? I know you must have been doing some kind of job for them.”

So he still hadn't figured out exactly what my connection to the twins, or more specifically Bane, was.

“Before you get tangled up even more, and I just hope that you can back out of whatever it is you're in now, I want to show you exactly what kind of people they are.”

He pushed the folder towards me, then seemed to change his mind and opened it himself. It must have taken some serious cashing in of owed favors to get that file released to him. Whoever had let him have it trusted that he'd bring it back.

It was police reports. Photographs. He was mostly interested in showing me the photographs. They were of crime scenes. Dead bodies, blood everywhere. A burnt out building, half the roof missing.

“They beat this man to death with a crowbar,” Jim said, pushing a photo towards me. “Or one of them did. We know this! We just can't prove it, any of it, or they paid off the right people, or the witnesses were too scared to step forward.”

I thought, involuntarily, of Trent and David. The holes in their heads, the blood trickling out in pools around them like dark, sticky halos. My stomach turned unpleasantly.

“What the hell are you showing me this for?” I said.

“Because I want you to know what you're getting into, and because I want you to get out while you still can! I'm not stupid, and I'm not in denial about what you do. But a few minor robberies and selling party drugs at gay bars is not as bad as this.”

“I'm telling you the truth,” I said. “I am not working with them.” It was the truth, after all.

He didn't believe me. He made a face that was half frustration, half resignation.

“You're going to get yourself killed,” he said.

A couple of mugshots had slid out of the folder, one of Bane and one of Dorrance. Both of them facing the camera, and in profile.

Jim's concern about me, it got to me. A lot of times I wished it wouldn't. He sat here, alone in his house, getting worked up over nothing. I sighed.

“I'm not working with the twins,” I said. “I know you don't believe me.”

“Damn right I don't.”

“I was picked up simply because I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the reason Talia al-Ghul took on my case to get the charges dropped, is because I'm seeing Bane.”

It got real quiet for a moment. I looked at Jim, who looked back at me.

“You're...” he began, then he made a face of disbelief. “He's gay? I though that was just spiteful rumors. The one with the scars, right?”

He picked up Bane's mugshot.

“Jesus...” he said. “Now I don't know what to say. But... I really can't see how dating him his any better. You're going to get dragged into all this.”

One of Jim's good qualities was that he never had any problem with me being gay. Not when I came out to him, not ever.

“You're already in it, if his lawyer is handling your case,” he said. “Do you know what her fee is? I'm guessing he's paying for that?”

He looked at me. “You get what I'm saying here?” he said.

“I'm just dating him,” I said.

I was done with this conversation. I had told him, hoping it would ease his mind. I wasn't going to sit here and listen to him trying to talk me out of seeing the guy I wanted to see.

“I gotta go,” I said.

Jim didn't say anything else on the subject, he just sighed.

**

We were in his car, Bane behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat. It was a little after noon and we were going to grab lunch somewhere. I was digging through the glove department looking for a cord so that we could get some decent music, namely what was on my phone, rather than the radio, when Bane hit the brakes so suddenly that the safety belt cut into my shoulder.

“That motherfucker,” he said. He didn't say anything else, before he opened the door and got out. I hurried out after him.

He just left the car there, in the middle of the street, and I looked at it for a second before I followed him.

He headed straight for a gym, the kind where people worked out in tight fitting spandex. The moment he stepped over the threshold, I was right behind him, a guy close to the door got up and Bane punched him in the face. Then once more.

Someone a little further in had time to panic and start towards the back exit, before Bane was on him. I just watched, along with a few other, stunned, people, who stopped what they were doing and stared. Bane beat the crap out of the guy – he packed a serious punch – then pulled out his gun and held it against the man's forehead.

I was holding my breath.

But he didn't pull the trigger. He put his gun back and kicked the guy once, as if for good measure, before he turned around and walked back towards where I was standing just inside the door. He passed me and I managed to tear myself away from the scene and follow him. Back to the car, that was still in the street, right where we had left it only a short moment ago.

Bane got in behind the wheel and I on the passenger side.

“Shit,” he said when he had started driving and took one hand from the wheel. He had blood on his knuckles. “Check the glove department.”

There was a packet of paper tissues in there, I had seen it before. Now I took it out and handed him one.

“Who was that?” I asked.

He didn't reply.

“Fine, don't tell me,” I said.

“He owes me.”

We drove to the bar where Selina worked. Dorrance was sitting by a table by the wall, a half-eaten burger in front of him. I wondered how Bane knew he'd be there. He hadn't called him or anything. Maybe they communicated telepathically.

Selina was behind the bar, pouring drinks for a couple of customers, and I exchanged a glance with her, before following Bane to Dorrance's table. We sat down opposite him.

“I ran into Peterson,” Bane said.

“Yeah?” Dorrance raised his eyebrows. “You run him over?”

“Not quite.”

They talked a bit and it took me a moment of sitting there, but then I realized what was strange about it. Wherever we went Bane always sat facing the door. In fact, he was so obsessed with it that if there weren't any free seats that suited him, he left. He always wanted to be able to watch the door. Now he didn't, because Dorrance was watching it for him.

Selina came up to the table. “Can I get you guys anything?”

“Yeah... Are we eating here?” I turned to Bane. He shrugged. I turned back to Selina. “I'll have a burger.”

“The same for me,” Bane said.

“Can you bring me another diet coke?” Dorrance smiled at Selina.

Selina smiled back. “Coming right up.”

I could see what she meant about him being a charmer. He was about a million times more generous with his smiles than Bane was.

Dorrance turned his gaze to me.

“So, what have you been up to, champ?”

I didn't care for the moniker, but I let it slide. “What do you mean?”

He had taken a bite of his burger and made a gesture with his hand. “Gotten into any fistfights or made any profound life choices or anything?” he said when he was finished chewing.

I scowled. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I thought so.”

Selina came back with his diet coke, and she had brought me and Bane each a glass of the same.

“Thanks sweetie,” Dorrance said.

“Thanks.” I smiled up at Selina.

I got up from the table and followed her over to the bar.

“You know,” she said as she stepped behind it, lowering her voice, “whenever I see Bane now, I picture him naked in my head.”

“That's practical if you ever have to give a speech in front of him.”

“It's not funny. And it's your fault.”

I smiled.

I thought about the guy in the gym, Peterson. Judging from what had gone down, and what Bane had said, my guess was Peterson had been laying low, and then had the bad luck of resurfacing today. Bane clearly hadn't expected to see him there and then, it wasn't premeditated.

“Movie night sometime soon?” I said.

“Sure. Tonight maybe?”

A couple came in and sat down by the window.

“Gotta work,” Selina said.

I went back to Bane and Dorrance.

Over the next few days I was busy, working. I squeezed in a movie night with Selina. It wasn't so hard, we lived together after all, but I didn't see Bane for over a week. He was busy too. I missed him. I talked to him on the phone a couple of times, but he wasn't big on talking on the phone. He kind of sucked at it too, to be honest.

It felt great when we finally got together.

“Hey handsome,” I said and put my arms around him when he let me in to his apartment.

“Don't call me that.”

“Why not?”

“I know I'm not.”

I looked at him. “I think you are,” I said.

He looked back at me. He had such beautiful eyes. The color of his irises shifted depending on the light, and his eyelashes were long like a girl's.

“Let's go out, grab something to eat,” he said.

“All right.”

We didn't leave right away. We kissed and he pushed me up against the wall and we kissed some more, then the whole thing progressed to me getting down on my knees and sucking him off. I had blown him in a car once, so the hallway of his apartment was classy in comparison.

Then we went out. Bane said the place we were going demanded you wear a necktie. I had a button down on, but no tie, so I borrowed one from Bane. He was so full of shit, though, because when we got there he wasn't even wearing one; he'd taken it off and put it in the pocket of his jacket, which was a habit of his, and they let us in without any problems whatsoever.

Still, it was a nice evening. It felt like a proper date, just the two of us, having dinner at a nice restaurant. I told him that. He looked at me across the table, a slight frown on his face.

“That's for women, though, isn't it?” he said.

I didn't even know what to reply to that.

**

”You got anything?”

The guy was seriously good-looking and dressed in clothes that left very little to the imagination. I was pretty sure he'd look stunning even if it hadn't been for the forgiving dimness of the nightclub lights.

“No, sorry,” I replied. I didn't. I'd come out tonight to have a good time, not to work. Not that the two had to be mutually exclusive.

I smiled at him and made an apologetic face. He smiled back. I thought about what Bane had said, that he didn't care if I slept with other guys. It was tempting.

I danced with the guy, he told me his name was Robert. He was hot, he was a good kisser, he had a great ass. I left the club with him.

Outside on the street we weren't the only ones looking for a taxi, and there weren't many of them around. Maybe it was the crisp night air, maybe it was the mundane setting of a sidewalk at two o'clock in the morning, but I realized I couldn't do this. It wasn't me. Even if it didn't matter to Bane, it mattered to me.

“Hey,” I said. “I'm just gonna head home.”

Robert, who had been on the lookout for a free cab, turned his head and looked at me.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

He had a look of disbelief on his face, then it changed to annoyance.

“That's just fucking great,” he said. “You were all over me in there, and now you're just gonna bail?”

“I'm not under any sort of obligation to fuck you, you know.”

“You're a real fucking headcase.”

He was a pretty city boy, if he decided he wanted to beat me up rather than have sex with me, he wouldn't stand a chance.

I scowled at him and then I turned around and left. After about half a block I took out my cellphone and called Bane.

“Yeah?” he said when he picked up.

“Hi, it's me.”

“I'm busy.” He hung up on me.

I stared at the phone in disbelief for a few seconds, then I punched in a text message.

_You're such an asshole._

I pressed 'send'. Then I wrote another one.

_I'm never fucking you again._

I sent that one too. After a short moment the phone buzzed.

_Fine_

That's what I had stayed faithful for? I didn't even know if he loved me, he had never said that he did.

My phone was quiet. Really quiet. Had I just broken up with him? Fuck. Shit. I felt queasy. I felt like crying. I might have, a little bit. I was drunk.

The next morning I felt hollow, except for a gnawing, stinging feeling in my chest. Selina gave me furtive glances, but she didn't ask, which was a good thing because I didn't want to talk about it.

Later that day I was slouching on the couch, in front of old reruns, when there was a knock on the door. Selina had gone out to meet some girlfriends. When I opened the door Bane was outside.

“What are you doing here?” I said when I let him into the apartment.

He turned his gaze to me.

“I figured you'd be pissed,” I said when he didn't say anything. “You know, since I broke up with you last night.”

“You didn't. You said you'd never fuck me again. That's not the same thing.”

Maybe it wasn't. Or maybe it was just semantics. Depending on what we were in the first place. Still, I felt relieved.

“No, but...” I didn't know what to say.

“You wanna break up?”

I couldn't read him.

I thought about telling him that I had almost gone home with someone last night. I kind of wanted to see how he'd react.

“I was going to fuck someone else, last night,” I said.

He looked at me. Nothing. I wished he'd just give me something, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking at all.

“But I didn't,” I said. “Because I'm with you.”

I threw my hands up. “I don't even know why the fuck I am though, because you don't care.”

“I care.”

“Oh yeah, you care about me? Why are you even with me, at all?”

It was quiet for a few seconds.

“I'm in love with you.”

My heart skipped a beat, or two. I met his gaze, then he looked away. I opened my mouth, but at that moment the door opened and Selina stood there. She looked from me to Bane.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I can leave again.”

“I have to go,” Bane said. He threw a glance at me. “See you later.”

Selina closed the door after him and made an apologetic face.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “Were you guys arguing?”

“Making up. I think.”

I felt kind of dazed. He was in love with me, he had said it. I went into my bedroom and picked up my cellphone from the nightstand.

_I'm in love with you too._

I pressed 'send' and waited. He replied after only a short moment.

_You are lovely and infuriating. I'm crazy about you_

I felt as if a hot air balloon was expanding inside my chest. That was sweet. He could be tender, he had been, like when he kissed me or held me, but he had never actually been sweet before. Or that expressive.

I thought about the relative safety of distance of a text message, of not actually being face to face. But I could give him that. If he was crazy about me he could have pretty much anything.


	4. Chapter 4

“On the house.” 

The waitress, she was in her fifties, bleached blonde hair and lots of make up, smiled as she put the plates on the table. 

“Thanks, sweetheart.” Dorrance smiled back at her. Bane just nodded. I didn't say or do anything, because let's face it, it wasn't because of me that we were getting free meals. 

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, and especially the cops, Bane and Dorrance were a menace, but in this neighborhood, their old neighborhood, my neighborhood, they were held in high regard. Not by everyone, sure, but by a lot of people. They were theirs. Maybe it had to do with that old saying, the devil you know, and all that.

When we had finished eating the waitress brought coffee. Both Bane and Dorrance each lit a cigarette. It was difficult not to feel a little bit left out when being in the company of the two of them. It wasn't what they said, or how they talked. Maybe it was something about how they mirrored each other, even with Bane's scars their appearances so obviously tied them together. The same dark, green eyes, the long noses, the full lips. When they were kids, before Bane got his face cut up, people couldn't tell them apart. 

Or maybe it was how they didn't seem to need to talk. I could see it in Dorrance's eyes when he looked at Bane. It was as if he knew what Bane was thinking and it made me feel jealous. I never knew what Bane was thinking. 

I put my hand on Bane's thigh under the table. He didn't react, but then he wouldn't. I knew he wasn't big on public displays of affection. But he didn't do anything to remove my hand from his leg. 

When we left, he was heading off with Dorrance somewhere and I had things to do as well, he put his hand on the small of my back, just for a second.

“Are you busy tonight?” he asked. 

“No.”

“Come by the gym?”

“All right.”

Bane hadn't told me any specific time, so I did the things I had planned to do, and when I was finished, about half past ten, I headed over to the gym. They closed at ten, but I figured Bane hadn't asked me there to spar with him anyway. In fact, I didn't actually know why he wanted to meet there.

The front door was locked, so I went around to the back and knocked. Barsad let me in. The gym was dark, except for the light spilling out from the coach's office. Dorrance stood there in the lit up doorway, smoking, and for a second my blood froze. It was like a flashback to that night in the warehouse; standing there on my knees, beaten and bleeding, his stony gaze sweeping over me, before giving the order to kill Trent and David. 

Dorrance shifted his weight and blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Let's go upstairs,” he said. 

Upstairs was a storage space. I had never been up there before. There were no windows and old training equipment lined the walls, as well as unlabeled boxes containing god-knew-what. There was a beaten up old couch, the twin of the one downstairs where old men, former fighters and boxing enthusiasts, used to sit and watch people spar. Adam was sitting in this one.

There was also a table, and a few odd chairs were placed around it. Bane was sitting on one of them, working on something in the light from a fluorescent desk lamp. 

Dorrance and Barsad had followed me up the stairs.

“Hey,” I said, feeling a bit unsure of what was going on. 

Bane didn't look up.

“Have a seat,” Adam said. 

I sat down in the couch. 

“Coffee?” Adam said. There was a pot of it, balancing on a stool next to the couch.

“No, thanks.”

“I'm afraid that's all we got,” he said. “Hey, here's an idea, why are we operating out of a stinky gym, when we could be at the fucking night club?”

“Because at night there are people at a night club?” Dorrance said.

“Okay, good point.”

It was a bomb. That which Bane was working on. I wasn't an expert, but I was pretty sure. I really hoped he knew what he was doing. 

“Done,” Bane said after a while. He straightened, rolled his shoulders back. He looked at me across the room. “We've got a message to send, tonight.”

“That's the message?” I said, nodding at the bomb. 

The plan was straightforward enough, and Dorrance explained it in only a few sentences. Drive up to the place, a restaurant, switch this thing on and throw it through the window, then get the hell out of there. 

“You up for it?” Bane directed the question at me. 

I nodded. “Sure,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. This was finally happening, it almost didn't feel real.

“Barsad's the driver,” Dorrance said. 

I didn't ask about the why. The why wasn't important, and it wasn't too hard to figure out either. It could be one of a few different reasons. Someone owed protection money, someone either belonged to or had pleaded allegiance to the competition. 

Bane showed me the device. 

“How come you made this yourself?” I said. “Surely you could have someone else make it?”

“So that I know it'll work the way it's supposed to,” he replied. 

I was kind of impressed he knew how to make a bomb. 

“Here,” Dorrance said, handing me a gun. “Just in case, we don't want any witnesses.”

I nodded and put the gun in the waistband at the back of my jeans. I didn't ask about the payment. I owed them. I'd gotten a call from Miss al-Ghul a few weeks back, all charges against me had been dropped. And I was excited. This was a test, an initiation of a kind, or it could be. This was what I wanted, what I had been waiting for. I had been trying to move away from dealing drugs at nightclubs, which was how I had mostly made my living up until now, for quite a while. This was an opportunity to do just that, to move up to the bigger league. 

I was nervous though. I couldn't help it. I hadn't handled explosives before, and I didn't want to fuck up. Bane met my gaze and held it for a moment before I got into the car. Be careful? Maybe that's what he was trying to say. Or, don't fuck up? I didn't know. 

Barsad wasn't a chatty guy, which I was grateful for as we drove off. I didn't feel like talking. My nerves were crackling, I felt wide awake the way you only did when you were about to put your hand in the fire. 

We drove until we came to the right street. It looked deserted, I couldn't see any movement anywhere.

“Looks clear,” Barsad said. He had stopped right at the top of the street, it was slightly downhill from here, and we had a good view. The windows of the shops and restaurants that lined the street were dark. A few lights were on here and there on the upper levels of some of the houses. 

I had counted on the restaurant being closed and empty. And it was. What I hadn't counted on was that the people who owned it and ran it lived in an apartment on top. I saw the lights in the windows when Barsad pulled up right outside the door. 

I didn't have time to think about it. I couldn't allow myself to think about it. I got out of the car, used a crowbar to punch through the glass in the door, flip the switch and throw the bomb through the hole. Then back into the car and Barsad sped out of there. 

I heard, and felt, the bang when the bomb went off. I was sweaty all over. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would crack a rib. I looked out the window. Barsad didn't say anything and neither did I. I was afraid of opening my mouth, in case I might throw up. I had never killed anyone before. Those people upstairs surely must have died in the blast. 

In the middle of it all I was paranoid about someone having seen us, someone coming after us. I looked out for cop cars, but didn't see any. 

Slowly, like waking up from a dream, it began to dawn on me that we'd gotten away. We'd done the deed, this horrible, big, fucking thing, and gotten away with it. The adrenaline pumping through my veins made me feel almost euphoric, like I was high. 

Barsad dropped me off at Bane's place. He was home, let me in. I more or less threw myself at him. He didn't ask how it'd gone.

“I want you to fuck me,” I said.

He frowned at me. “You don't like that,” he said. 

“But I want you to do it now. If that's okay with you?”

“All right.”

The bedroom was quiet after we'd had sex. It was dark. A faint light spilled in between the curtains, from the streetlights below. 

“Are you all right?” Bane asked after a little while. It felt strange that he asked that. 

“Yeah.”

“I didn't hurt you?”

“No.”

He hadn't. I didn't like being fucked, it felt intrusive, not good. I'd wanted it because of that, because I wanted to not think about anything else, and I'd been insanely horny. It was a bit different doing it with Bane, because I loved him, and he loved me. 

We probably wouldn't do it again, though. We were a good match like that. I didn't like having a cock up my ass, and he loved it. 

I smiled a little at him, in the dark where I could just barely make out his eyes. 

“Did it feel good for you?” I asked.

“Yeah.” 

It was quiet again for a little while.

“It's just adrenaline,” he said then. He reached for me and pulled me closer to him. 

I knew it was. I had done other things, but still, nothing like this one. I hadn't pulled the trigger on anyone before. In a way I still hadn't. Bane had built the bomb. But I flipped the switch.

“You get used to it,” he said. 

**

I bought a car. It wasn't fancy. It wasn't black and shiny and it didn't smell of new leather seats inside. But it was all right, and it was mine. In time I'd upgrade, get something cooler, but in the meantime I was pretty pleased with this one. I'd had a car before, but then I couldn't afford to keep it. 

I parked on the street outside my building, and saw Bane's car pull up on the other side of the street at the same time. His car was black and shiny. I waited for him to cross the street. He drew on his cigarette before throwing it in the gutter. 

“Hi,” I said. 

“Hi.”

It was pretty late, close to midnight. 

“You wanna come up?” I said. “Or stay the night, or whatever you had in mind?”

He nodded. I could hear at least two different sets of TVs as we walked up the stairs to my door. My neighbors watched a lot of TV.

When I opened the door to the apartment I froze in the doorway for a second. Dorrance was sitting in the armchair. Selina on the couch. There were two wine glasses, empty, on the coffee table. She'd bought them at a garage sale a little while back. 

I don't know why that scene threw me so. They were two adults, having a glass of wine. In my living room. 

Dorrance smiled. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

I closed the door. Selina smiled a little sheepishly. I didn't know what to say. The apartment had, frankly, never felt so cramped before. There was nowhere to go, except the bedroom, unless we sat down there with them, but that felt wrong. 

“You want something?” I asked Bane.

“No.”

I said goodnight, then we headed to my bedroom. 

“Did you know about that?” I asked Bane when we had closed the door behind us. 

He looked at me. Of course he fucking knew. I started to get undressed. 

I guess what bothered me was that Selina hadn't said a peep about it to me. I saw her almost every day, but she had never mentioned Dorrance, and yet he had somehow ended up here, on a Friday night. That had to have been brewing for at least a little while. 

Their glasses had been empty when we got here. I wondered if he had left yet. After a while it became apparent that he hadn't. Selina was the worst, but he was pretty fucking noisy too.

“Jesus,” I said. “You wanna listen to that?”

“You want to go out there and tell them to stop?” Bane replied. 

No, I really didn't. 

The next morning, when I got up and went to the bathroom, Dorrance was gone. The couch really wasn't big enough for two people to sleep on an entire night. Selina's dark hair was a mess over the pillow, her thin figure shrouded in the cover. 

I got back into bed when I was done in the bathroom. Bane was on his back, still asleep by the look of it. I slid my hand over his chest, the hair tickling my palm. I caressed his stomach, his skin felt burning hot, and followed the trail of hair from his bellybutton down to the coarse bush of it around his dick. I moved my hand up his side. He had a scar there, just below his ribs. Maybe it was from the same time as those on his face.

“What time is it?” he asked, his voice gravelly from sleep. 

“A little past eight.”

“I gotta go.”

“Okay.” I kissed his cheek, his stubble raspy against my lips. “You want breakfast?”

“No.” He turned his head and kissed me, then he got up and on his way out of the room I got a good view of that great ass of his.

I liked that he thought it worthwhile to come over just to spend the night, even if we didn't have sex, even if we just slept. 

I got up and made coffee after he had left. The smell of it stirred the bundle of bedclothes on the couch. I looked away while she pulled on her faded dressing gown, then she came into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said. 

“Hi.” I focused on putting tomatoes on a slice of bread. She took a coffee mug from the shelf above the kitchen counter, poured herself some coffee. 

I turned towards her. “You and Dorrance? How long has that been going on?”

She shrugged a little. “A little while.”

“You said it was a one time thing.”

She shrugged again, smiled a little. “I guess it kinda got picked up again?”

“So you've slept with him before last night, after that 'one time'?”

“Excuse me, but how is that any of your business?”

“I can't believe you didn't tell me.”

“I don't have to tell you anything!”

“No, but...”

“You've been pretty fucking busy! And maybe I didn't want to say anything, because I didn't know if it was something. Like, he seemed pretty interested, but then, you know, what if it was nothing, just him being flirty, and then if I'd said something I would have looked like a complete idiot if he wasn't, you know, interested after all.”

I was silent for a few seconds.

“Sorry,” I said then. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

She sat down at the kitchen table. 

“He seems pretty interested now,” I said after a short moment. She glanced up at me and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. I smiled back at her. 

I sat down at the table too.

“We've actually only had sex three times, in total, counting that first 'one time',” she said. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We've mostly... talked. Then last week we went for a drive, he was driving me home from work but we took a detour, and then we had sex in his car.”

I laughed. “Really? What the fuck for? He's got a place, you've got a place.”

“Yeah, I don't know, it just sort of happened.” She smiled. “I really like him.” She chewed on a nail. “And he's so hot, it's crazy.” 

She met my gaze. I smiled, but I only did it for her sake. I didn't like Dorrance. 

**

I hadn't been to see Jim in a while. I had made a pit-stop or two at his house, but all the things he wanted to say but didn't, they were right there on his face. When he called me and invited me to Sunday dinner, I couldn't turn him down. If it had been a text message, maybe I would have fired some lie about already having plans back, but now I didn't.

I drove over there, a little early actually, thinking I'd make an effort not to make it seem like an obligation. Maybe we could talk, like we used to, about ordinary things. I hadn't really tried, if I were to be honest. 

“Hi,” he said when he opened the door.

He stepped to the side and let me in. I took two steps inside, then stopped. I could see into the living room from here, and standing there was Bruce.

I took a step back, instinctively. It felt like a trap. And also completely surreal. Like, it couldn't be. 

He came out into the hallway. 

“Hi,” he said and smiled a little.

I stared. My heart was pounding, I could feel my pulse beating at my temples. 

He'd gotten older. His hair was longish and he had a beard. 

His smile widened, inexplicably.

“Jesus...” he said, “you're... all grown up.” He had tears in his eyes.

He had no fucking right. 

“Fuck you,” I spat at Jim and turned to leave.

“John!” Jim called after me.

I should have just kept on walking, gotten in the car and left. Instead I turned around.

“Fuck you both!”

Bruce was in the doorway.

“Please, I just want to talk.”

“I'm not interested in anything you have to say.”

“What about 'I'm sorry?'”

“Fuck off!”

I did get in the car then. I felt out of breath, the shock coursing through my system. I should have fucking punched him. I should have left immediately, not giving either of them even a second more of my time than I had to. 

I drove aimlessly. I couldn't handle seeing anyone right now. 

Fuck. Fuck! I pounded the steering wheel. I didn't even know he was out. How could I not know that? Someone must have heard about it, someone could have told me. Like Jim, the fucking back-stabber. 

I stopped in the parking lot outside the gym, but I didn't get out of the car. I leaned back against the headrest. I had so many thoughts in my head, I thought it might explode. 

I sat there for a pretty long time. I saw Bane's car pull up a little further away in the lot. Barsad parked next to him. I watched them get out and start towards the entrance. Bane was broad-shouldered and moved like a heavyweight boxer.

Either Bane had eyes in the back of his head, or Barsad told him about my car being here, and me in it, because he turned his head and looked in my direction for a second. They continued walking, but then Bane turned around and came towards me instead. 

I opened the car door. 

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Nothing. Just sitting here. Not against the law, is it?”

He looked at me for a moment, then he just turned around and walked back in the direction he came from. 

Great. Well, I had enough on my plate, without worrying about him, right now. It was my fucking business, I didn't have to explain myself to him. I was just fucking sitting here, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

Bruce had written to me when he was inside. Except for the first few letters I never read any of them. After a while, even the thought of opening a single one of those envelopes became unbearable.

Now he was out. I liked him better where he was, when I controlled the communication as easily as ripping paper. I hadn't thought about it like that before, but I did now.

I stood on the sidewalk outside a bar, at two in the morning, waiting for my ride and I just felt so tired. Exhausted from constantly being pissed off. I'd gotten into a couple of arguments with Bane too, simply because I was in a bad mood. He mostly ignored me when he was irritated with me, but I didn't want him to ignore me. I didn't know what I wanted.

The car showed up. I got into the backseat. We turned a corner and there I saw him, standing on the sidewalk, as if he was waiting to cross the street. A nondescript man, closing in on middle-age, in jeans and a dark jacket. I turned my head and watched him for those few extra seconds, before we had passed him. And for that moment I felt cut off from the others in the car, who were unaware that was my brother, who hadn't seen him.

The moment was gone almost immediately. I knew he hadn't seen me, because the car had tinted windows. What the fuck was he doing out at two in the morning anyway?

When I got home, it was a little after five in the morning, I heard shouting as I entered the stairwell. Ascending the stairs I made out some words and I considered turning around, get in my car and drive to Bane's, or just sleep in the backseat. But I continued upstairs. When I got to my floor I saw Dorrance in the hallway, standing outside my door, which was closed. And apparently locked, because he pounded on it.

“Open the fucking door! Selina!”

I couldn't make out what her reply was.

“I wasn't! I've already told you! You're the most beautiful girl in the world! You're just slightly insane!”

He spotted me.

“Hi,” I said. What else could I say?

He didn't reply.

“Selina, let me the fuck in! How long are you going to stay mad about something that's just in your head?!”

I walked up to him. I so didn't want to get in the middle of this. But I also kind of wanted to get to my bed.

“You've got a key?” he asked me.

As it happened, I didn't. I'd left without it earlier that day, my mind on other things. I shook my head.

I knocked on the door. I lived here, after all. “Selina, it's me,” I said. “Can you let me in so I can go to bed?”

Silence for a few seconds, then the lock clicked. Dorrance was closest to the door and when it opened Selina slapped him across the face. Hard, by the sound of it. The surprised look on his face was actually kind of fun to watch.

I slipped inside.

“You bitch, that hurt!” Dorrance said.

“Good,” Selina said. “Now go away.”

“Hey...”

She slammed the door shut. She and I looked at each other for a moment.

“I'm going to bed,” I said.

“Okay. Me too.”

“I can stay up, if you want to talk?” I said, feeling a bit guilty about not being around as much lately.

“No. I'm just gonna go to bed too.”

She looked a little sad, I thought, when she headed over to the couch.

“You want the bed?” I asked. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“I'm not an invalid,” she replied. “But thanks.”

I wondered a little bit about what Dorrance had done to piss her off. Slept around was the first thing that came to mind. I didn't know if he did that, but it wasn't all too difficult to imagine he might.

**

Selina and Dorrance apparently worked through it, whatever it was, because a few days later he was in the apartment, eating spongecake by the kitchen table. Watching them I thought he looked like he genuinely liked her, perhaps was even in love with her. Didn't mean he was treating her good, though. But it wasn't any of my business.

There was a knock on the door. I had just come home to change my clothes and I went to open.

It wasn't quite as much of a shock, this time. Bruce, standing there, looking at me, the same height as me.

“Hi,” he said.

I felt my jaw tighten. Hadn't I made myself clear?

His gaze flickered momentarily to the spongecake-eating gangster and fag hag behind me. Somehow it felt as if he couldn't have picked a worse possible time to show up.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“I just want to talk,” he said.

“I'm not interested.”

I felt very much aware we had an audience. Maybe he did too.

“I know you're angry...” he began.

“You don't know shit.”

Fuck, I couldn't do this. I pushed past him, out into the hallway, and closed the door.

“This is my life,” I said, “you can't just barge in...”

“Was that Selina?”

The question caught me off guard. “Yeah,” I said.

He smiled a little. I noticed he didn't ask who Dorrance was. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn't.

“I'm not gonna be a part of your little nostalgia trip,” I said.

“That's what you think this is about?” He looked at me. “I want to make things right. I want us to be brothers again.”

“It's a little late for that.” I didn't want to have this discussion, I didn't want to hear any of it. “I've got somewhere to be.”

I headed down the stairs. I hadn't changed my clothes, as I had planned, but I had no desire to go back into the apartment. I didn't want to face Selina and Dorrance right now, and also, they might have moved on from their cake-eating business now that they had the place to themselves.

“I realize showing up announced like this isn't fair,” Bruce said. He had followed me out onto the street.

“You're damn right it isn't!”

I felt childish, in the middle of all my justified anger, and I hated it.

“You made it clear you weren't interested in being my brother anymore,” I said, and I made an effort to keep my voice calm.

“That was never what I wanted. I was going away for so many years, you'd be an adult by the time I got out, and I couldn't be there for you. I wanted someone to be there for you.”

“Yeah, well there wasn't. I gotta go.”

I walked over to my car and opened the door. The image of him got smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror as I sped off. He looked so fucking tragic. Did he even know how pathetic he was?

**

Bane's couch was really comfortable. Spacious. Not too soft and not too hard. I'd had a couple of whiskeys before coming to this mind-blowing conclusion. The alcohol made me feel loose-limbed and warm. It was his whiskey as well, but he wasn't drinking. He was walking around the place naked, hiding away bundles of money in places you'd never think to look for them. It was just a couple of thousand, though, nothing compared to the pile on the coffee table.

I reached out and took a bundle, dragged my thumb over the edge. It was so much money, my mind couldn't fully grasp it.

“I need to get rid of this shit,” Bane said and indicated the money on the table, as well as the automatic weapon next to it.

He took the bundle I had in my hand and threw it in with the rest. He started putting it all in a bag that he pulled out from under the couch. I watched him. His body, his soft dick, his hands.

He went and got dressed. When he came back into the living room he looked at the bottle, then he looked at me.

“How much have you had to drink?” he asked.

“A bit.”

“I can't have this here,” he said, lifting the bag. “But you're not coming with, not in the state you're in.”

“Okay.”

He kept looking at me.

“I can just stay here,” I said, spreading my hands.

He didn't say anything for a few seconds. “All right,” he said then.

I rolled over onto my side and watched some TV. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up the room was dark, the TV was off and my head didn't feel fantastic. The couch wasn't that comfortable after all, I decided, and I dragged myself up and went into the bedroom. I could vaguely see the outline of Bane under the cover, and I could most definitely hear his snoring.

I peeled off my clothes and got in under the cover. I shook Bane's shoulder.

“Roll over,” I said. “You're snoring.”

He moved and the snoring stopped. I closed my eyes. What the hell did I drink all that whiskey for? I didn't even like whiskey all that much.

The next morning I felt as if I had sand in my eyes. I took a shower and brushed my teeth. Drank something like half a lake of water.

“What are you doing today?” I asked Bane who was sitting across from me at the kitchen table.

“Nothing much.”

He was watching me. I could feel it as I concentrated on my eggs.

“You're not dealing Gideon's stuff anymore?” he said. It was half a statement, half a question.

“No.”

“Good.”

I looked up. “Why is that good?”

He didn't reply, just turned his eyes to the morning paper instead.

“You know you can trust me,” I said.

“It's got nothing to do with you, you don't need to know.”

“It could have something to do with me.”

He kept on reading.

“I think things are getting pretty serious between Dorrance and Selina,” I said.

It seemed serious. He was at our place a lot and she slept quite a lot of nights at some other place, most likely his.

“It wouldn't be surprising if they got married,” I said.

“Maybe not.”

He was still looking at the paper, which made me feel kind of ignored.

“It's not like that with you and me, though,” I said. “I have to work, to make a living. And it's not like I can go out and find a job that you haven't fucking sanctioned, can I?”

Finally he looked up. “You need money?”

“No! Well, yes, but...” I sighed. “I want to earn it.”

I did a few things here and there and it paid enough that I could make a decent living, but a lot of the time I just followed him around. And he didn't pay me for that.

“I want a job.”

“But you have a job.” He smiled at me, showing his endearingly crooked teeth. “You're my bodyguard.”

I made a face at him. “You're so not funny.”

**

I was right about Selina and Dorrance. It didn't take long before they announced they were getting married. I guessed she didn't know about him sleeping around. I knew, or thought I did. I'd seen some things, in nightclubs, but I didn't tell her. I didn't want to ruin things for her. Maybe she already did know, they fought like cat and dog sometimes. Or maybe I was a shitty, cowardly friend.

“You want to be an honorary girlfriend, and come to my bachelorette party?” Selina asked me.

“Um...”

“Come on! It's at a gay bar, anyway, so you can always fuck off and dance with some hot guy if you get bored.”

I went to her bachelorette party. It wasn't as if I expected to get an invitation to Dorrance's bachelor party. I wasn't even sure he had one. I supposed Bane might have been in charge of organizing that, and I honestly couldn't think of anyone less suitable to do that.

The wedding itself was organized pretty quickly, but that didn't stop it from being grand. I felt horribly out of place, but I couldn't even say why. I knew at least as many of the guests as Selina did. She was beautiful in an expensive looking, white dress and she looked so happy. I wanted to be happy for her, I really did.

I danced with her and with a couple of her girlfriends. Bane looked great in a new, tailor-made, three-piece suit, but he didn't dance with me.

I was standing by the bar when Dorrance showed up next to me. He ordered a whiskey from the bartender, then turned to me. He'd gotten rid of his jacket and tie.

“Waiting for a turn on the dance floor with me?” he said.

“No.” I scowled and he smiled.

“Always so prickly.”

The bartender handed him a glass of whiskey, then looked questioningly at me. I shook my head.

“If I didn't know you get your kicks from fucking big, hairy men, I would have said you were jealous.”

He looked at me. He had the same, hard-to-read gaze that Bane did. I scowled at him, again.

“I'm not,” I said.

“No? Could've fooled me.”

“Selina is my best friend. I just want you to treat her right.”

“I adore her.” He smiled. “I'll give her whatever she wants.” Then he walked off.

I went to sit down at the table where Bane was sitting with Barsad and Adam. Unlike Dorrance, Bane was wearing his jacket, he even had the tie on still. They were talking about business. After a while Dorrance showed up and whispered something in Bane's ear. Bane nodded.

I really hated being at this wedding, but I didn't want to leave in case Selina noticed.

Dorrance didn't know what he was talking about, I wasn't jealous. I looked at Bane, who was dragging on his cigarette, watching the people milling about the room. I was envious. I hated to admit it, but there it was, an ugly blotch sitting in my chest anyway. I'd worked so hard, did everything I could to prove myself to him, I'd blown up a fucking building, but still he only let me do small jobs.

Selina did nothing. And Dorrance just moved in, put a ring on her finger and said he'd give her whatever she wanted. I'd be alone in the apartment again, she had already moved out most of her things. She'd move on to her new life as his wife and I'd be exactly where I had always been.

It dawned on me then, and I was amazed I hadn't seen it before – Bane was never going to let me in on the big jobs. He had no intention of giving me a more important position. I was just his boyfriend and that was exactly what he wanted.

I felt like I would suffocate in my suit and tie. I got up from the table and made my way to the lobby. The men's room was mercifully empty. I undid my tie. I kicked the door to one of the stalls and it closed with a bang.

Fuck.

The bathroom door opened a short moment later and I was surprised to see Bane.

“What's going on?” he said.

“You're a fucking jerk.” It was visible on his face, for just a second, that he wasn't expecting that.

“Are you drunk?”

“No. I wish I was.”

He frowned. “You've been a fucking asshole lately,” he said.

I scoffed. “I've been an asshole? What about you? You're just stringing me along!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's very practical for you, I suppose. You get laid whenever you feel like it.”

He was looking straight at me.

“You were never going to let me make any big money,” I said. “You give me a few jobs here and there, to keep me happy, but it's pretty fucking obvious I'm never going to do anything other than unimportant shit and suck your dick.”

“That's what this is about?” he said.

He stared at me for a few seconds, his face unreadable.

“Fuck you,” he said then and turned around and left.

I hadn't expected him to leave and I stood in the bathroom for a moment with the silence pressing against my ears. Then I left. Selina wouldn't notice, I told myself, and even if she did she wouldn't care.

The next morning I checked my phone. I didn't have any messages. I called Bane, but he dismissed my call. After a few seconds my phone buzzed.

_Don't fucking call me again_

I stared at the text message for a moment. I couldn't really process it. I had expected him to be pissed off, we had argued yesterday, but this made it seem like he was really, fucking angry.

I got up, made coffee on autopilot. I wanted to text him back, but I hesitated to do so. I'd had two cups of coffee and a dry bagel when there was a knock on the door.

It wasn't Bane. It was Bruce.

“Fuck off.” I moved to close the door, but he caught it.

“Jim's in the hospital.”

I went with him to the hospital, followed him in my car since he had Jim's.

It was a heart-attack. Jim was going into surgery for a bypass. All Bruce and I could do was wait, in an ugly, antiseptic-smelling hallway.

“You want some coffee?” Bruce asked after a little while.

I shook my head. He got up and returned with a plastic cup of that disgusting, soap-like coffee that came out of cheap machines.

Selina and I had talked about getting an espresso machine, but we'd never gotten around to it. I supposed she would get one now, if she didn't already. That was a classic wedding gift. It felt as if Bane and I had broken up. It was a dark, gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Don't fucking call me again. That was finite. I didn't get it. I didn't want to break up with him. I didn't want Jim to die. I'd be all alone, there was no one left.

I leaned forward and put my face in my hands.

“He's gonna be all right,” Bruce said.

“You don't fucking know that.”

“He got to the hospital quickly.”

I wanted to believe him.

It took forever, or so it seemed, but finally a doctor or whatever she was, came and told us that the surgery was successful, Jim needed to rest now and we could come back tomorrow and see him.

“With the risk of pissing you off,” Bruce said when we got out from the hospital. “Do you want to go get something to eat?”

I felt exhausted. Maybe that was why I agreed. Maybe I felt I owed it to Jim or something, when he was recuperating in the hospital.

Instead of going out somewhere we went back to Jim's place. Bruce said there were leftovers. I didn't feel like sitting in a restaurant either, not after the hours at the hospital.

Bruce knew his way around the place.

“Do you live here?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“For now. I'm looking for a place.”

Did he have a job? I didn't want to ask, I wasn't interested. We ate in silence, by Jim's kitchen table. My phone was so, so silent.

“They'd call me, if anything happened,” Bruce said after a while. “They have my number.”

He thought I was worrying about bad news about Jim.

“Yeah, I know, I...” It didn't matter. I kept checking my phone anyway. Eventually I sent a text message to Bane.

_Pls call me._

There was no reply.

Bruce got up and took a coffee filter from the cupboard above the microwave. “You want coffee?” he asked.

“No, I should go...”

That wasn't true, though. There was nowhere I needed to be, and I didn't get up.

“My boyfriend just broke up with me.” I didn't even know why the hell I said that.

“Um, sorry to hear that.”

“No you're not, because I'm pretty sure Jim will have told you who he is.”

“Well, yeah, but...”

It got quiet.

“I don't have a problem with you being gay,” Bruce said then.

“You don't have a problem with it?” I scoffed. “That's real fucking big of you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Right, whatever.”

I put my phone back in my pocket. Maybe I should have been focusing on Jim, but I couldn't stop thinking about Bane. Don't fucking call me again. I felt hollow.

I stayed for a cup of coffee. I avoided looking at Bruce, because seeing him still felt too weird.

“Do you have something stronger?” I asked after a little while, scowling at my coffee.

Bruce smiled a little. “Jim's an alcoholic and I'm on probation.”

“Great.”

“What do you drink? When you're able, I mean, what do you like?”

I shrugged. “Beer, drinks, if I'm out somewhere. Wine, sometimes, if I'm having dinner.”

“I miss ice-cold beer.”

I looked at Bruce. I couldn't remember the last conversation we'd had. Well, I could, it had been goodbye. But before that, I couldn't say what the last thing we talked about was, but it might have been about comic book heroes, or sneakers I wanted, or that I had to do my homework.

The next day I went to visit Jim. He seemed tired, but otherwise okay. He seemed happy to see me.

“They're gonna let me go home soon,” he said.

At least he had Bruce there to take care of him, so that was good.

**

I had texted Bane a couple of times, without getting any reply. Eventually I went over there. It was late and not a lot of traffic on the streets. The convenience store across the street from his building was still open and it was a sign of how lovesick I was that it tugged at my heart to remember all the times that Bane had asked me to pop in there and buy cigarettes for him on my way over.

I walked up the stairs but it wasn't the exercise that had my heart pounding as I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I rang it again, then I knocked.

“Are you in there?”

The door opened suddenly, forcing me to take a step back.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Bane said.

“I don't know what's going on...”

He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me inside, then he closed the door. He didn't want to have private conversations in the stairwell, where nosy neighbors could listen in.

“What do you want?” he said. His tone of voice was hard.

There was light spilling out from the kitchen and the living room, but the hallway lights were off which left the room shadowy.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” I said.

“You're an idiot.” The way he said it was so filled with contempt that I recoiled.

“Did you break up with me? By text message? You're the idiot!”

I wasn't at all prepared for him to grab me. He pushed me up against the wall and put his forearm across my throat.

“That you even dare to come here,” he said.

I tried to kick him, but he pressed his arm tighter against my throat. He was strong, I couldn't get out of his grip, and fear trickled up my spine.

“I don't know why you're so angry, but I'm sorry, okay?”

“You're sorry? I fucking believed you!”

He slammed me against the wall. I didn't understand and I was starting to get scared.

“I guess that does make me the idiot,” he said.

I could feel his breath on my face.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You were always so interested in the business, in the money, and I told myself that was only natural, to be hungry for that. I should have fucking seen that was all it was.”

“What? No!”

“I look like the fucking Frankenstein monster, but you had me believing you liked me.”

“That's not...” I was panicking for real now, I couldn't get away, it was hard to breathe. “Let me go, Bane, please... I can't breathe...”

He did let me go then. I took a deep breath, then another, filling my lungs to the brim.

“You fucking asshole,” I said and put my hand to my throat.

“Get out.”

I looked at him. “I love you.”

“Fuck off, I don't want to see you again.”

“Bane...”

I couldn't get my head around it. He thought it had all just been an act?

“You can't do this,” I said. I met his gaze. “Please, I... I never meant it like that. I'm sorry.” I could feel the tears burning in my eyes. “You've got it all wrong,” I said. “Don't do this.”

Part of me wanted to punch him, for what he had just done, but another part of me just wanted for him to not kick me out.

”Get the fuck out, or I'll kill you,” he said. His eyes were cold.

I had to leave, so I did. My legs and feet moved of their own accord somehow. My throat was sore. I got in my car and drove away, and after a little while I started to cry.

**

I had fucked up. Okay, I wanted in on his business, work for him, do important things, make money. But it was never about tricking him. The paranoid idiot. I hated that he thought that. And I missed him so fucking much. It was a shapeless, constantly moving, shifting emptiness.

If I had thought job opportunities limited before, it was nothing compared to now. There wasn't a whole lot of crime happening in this town that Bane and Dorrance didn't either control or know about. The dealer I used to buy from had been put out of business, or incorporated into one of the twins' operations, so I had trouble getting my hands on products that I could sell. People who were rivals to Bane and Dorrance sure as hell didn't want to hire me for anything.

I resorted to minor robberies. I had to do something, or I wouldn't be able to pay the rent. I did my share of trying to drown my sorrows, but I avoided the bar where Selina used to work. I wasn't sure if the place had lost its appeal in Dorrance's opinion, it sure didn't have much going for it to begin with, but I didn't want to risk running in to him.

It didn't matter. There were other places. Other places where you could find insights at the bottom of a glass. Things like new ways to say sorry to Bane, ways to beg for him to take me back. Or find myself thinking about Bruce, of how he and Jim really were the only people I had in this world. Wondering how Selina was doing. I had only spoken to her sporadically, and to be honest I mostly had myself to blame for that.

I downed the last, watery dregs of my drink and got up from the bar stool. There were only a few cars in the parking lot outside. I dug out my car key from my pocket. I figured I'd head home, grab a few hours of sleep.

“Hey, get the fuck away from my car,” I said.

The guy who was leaning against the trunk, smoking a cigarette, turned his head.

“What's your problem?” he said.

“That's my car, and I don't want your filthy ass on it.”

He blew out a stream of smoke before he straightened.

“You queens are fucking sensitive, aren't you?”

“What did you say?”

It quickly escalated from there. I admit, I threw the first punch.

I didn't understand what happened. It was like something that couldn't be. Even as I lay there on the ground, bleeding, I didn't really believe it. It didn't hurt. The ground was cold beneath me. I could hear the distant sound of traffic, a soft murmur in my ears. I could see the bumper of my car, and the streetlights. I was scared, I wanted someone to hold me. I was cold. And then, then I wasn't.

 

**_Epilogue_ **

Selina ripped the first pair of stockings she tried to put on. Frustrated she threw them aside and took out another pair from the box. Black 20 denier stockings. Dorrance was putting on his cufflinks and his shirt was so painfully white, so crisply clean, like snow. She started crying.

“Hey...” He came up to her where she was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Sweetie...”

He put his arms around her and she tilted her face upwards, as if ruining his shirt with her make up was somehow unbearable.

“I can't...” She felt her face stretch into a grimace.

“Ssh... it'll be okay.” He stroked her hair and held her. He smelled faintly of shaving cream. His lips were soft when he kissed her temple.

It was raining. In the parking lot outside the church people were smoking under black umbrellas. Not that many people had come. Much like herself, John never had much family.

“Let's sit in the back,” she said. Dorrance nodded.

Inside the church smelled of flowers. Her legs felt weak, even as she was sitting down. Her knees were shaking.

She hadn't been sure if Bane would show up, but he did, shortly before the service was about to begin. Instead of sitting down next to her, he walked around to the other side of the pew and sat down next to Dorrance. There was no point in taking things like that as some sort of personal slight. He was weird around all women, as if he found them mildly disgusting.

She was fine for the first part of the service, even joined in the singing of one of the hymns, but then seeing the casket and knowing that John was lying inside it, just became unbearable. She'd had the foresight to bring a handkerchief and she pressed it to her mouth.

She felt as if there was a rip in her chest. It was incomprehensible that he was gone and at the same time it was an undeniable, horrible truth. She thought about the times when they'd gone clubbing, at gay bars mostly, and then grabbed a burger at a stand sometime in the small hours of the morning, just before dawn. That was the John she missed the most. The funny, warm, slightly camp John. He never stopped being that John, not completely.

She grabbed Dorrance's hand, feeling that she had to hold on to something, to someone. The priest talked about how John had been taken from them too soon, but even though he said the words, he didn't know. He couldn't know. He couldn't put the injustice of it into words, that someone who was young, who was supposed to be here, who was supposed to live, was dead.

The tears just kept on coming, a thick lump in her throat. Memories flashed for her inner eye, hundreds, thousands of them, at a sickening speed until she thought she couldn't take it anymore.

After the service she went to shake Bruce's hand. She couldn't say anything. There were no words. She hadn't seen him since he got out of prison, and she wondered how much of all that aging that had happened over the last few weeks. She shook hands with John's uncle Jim too. He took her hand in both of his for a moment.

“I want to go home,” she said to Dorrance shortly after.

“All right.” He put his hand on her back.

It had stopped raining. Cars were leaving the parking lot. Both Dorrance and Bane lit a cigarette each. Selina looked at Bane. His face was stern, unreadable. Had he loved John? She liked to think that he had.

They were by their car when Bruce walked up to them. He glanced briefly at Selina, then he looked at Dorrance and Bane.

“The police haven't caught the guy who did it,” he said. His voice was low, his gaze steady. “If you were to find out... I don't have much to offer, I don't have any money...”

Dorrance nodded a little. The request didn't seem to surprise him. Selina glanced at Bane, and realized then that Bruce wouldn't even have had to ask.

“He is going to wish he had never been born,” Bane said.


End file.
